space

breathing space

1. A sufficient buffer of time or space that allows for freedom of movement or relief from a given source of pressure or stress. My yearly bonus always affords us a little bit of breathing space for the Christmas expenses.Please move back and give us some of breathing space here.The professor extended the deadline for our midterm papers, so I've got a bit of breathing space to get it finished.

2. A pause to rest or to think over something. Give me a minute, I just need a little breathing space while I figure this out.

be a waste of space

slang To be blatantly unhelpful or useless. This phrase is often applied to people as a derogatory term. Boy, he's a waste of space, standing around while the rest of us all move furniture.The old monitor doesn't work anymore, so at this point it's just a waste of space. Let's trash it.

safe space

A place where one will not encounter mistreatment, discrimination, and, in some cases, words or activities that could trigger reminders of past psychological trauma. The campus needs a safe space for the LGBTQ community.Is there a safe space for trauma victims to go after that lecture on human trafficking?

space out

Stupefy or disorient, as if or from a drug. For example, This medication spaces me out so I can't think clearly, or I wonder what those kids are on-they look totally spaced out. [1960s] Also see zone out.

take up space

space out

v.

1. To organize or arrange some things or some people with spaces between: The tournament organizers spaced the matches out so that players would have time to rest. The police officers spaced themselves out along the parade route.

2. To stupefy or disorient someone from or as if from a drug: The medicine spaces me out so I can't think clearly. The summer heat tends to space out the students and makes it difficult to teach.

3. To lose awareness of one's surroundings: I stared out the window and spaced out for an hour.

4. To lose concentration or become inattentive: I was supposed to meet her at 9:00, but I spaced out and didn't get there till 10:30.

The time of Elizabeth was only distant from the present time by a moment of space compared with the ages which had passed since the water had run between those banks, and the green thickets swarmed there, and the small trees had grown to huge wrinkled trees in solitude.

I have no space (in that little room) to catalogue all the whim-whams with which she had made it beautiful, from the hand-sewn bell-rope which pulled no bell to the hand-painted cigar-box that contained no cigars.

Westward of the shores of America, a wide space of open ocean extends, with not an island as a halting-place for emigrants; here we have a barrier of another kind, and as soon as this is passed we meet in the eastern islands of the Pacific, with another and totally distinct fauna.

That Space, as our mathematicians have it, is spoken of as having three dimensions, which one may call Length, Breadth, and Thickness, and is always definable by reference to three planes, each at right angles to the others.

Space, likewise, is a continuous quantity; for the parts of a solid occupy a certain space, and these have a common boundary; it follows that the parts of space also, which are occupied by the parts of the solid, have the same common boundary as the parts of the solid.

I must have been giddy, and perhaps we both were giddy, but the next thing I knew there was a good foot of space between us in the peaceful glow of the ground- glass globes, in the everlasting stillness of the winged figures.

A few clouds tempered the heat of the day, and, besides, a little air could be felt over this vast expanse of water; but about one o'clock, the Victoria, having slanted across this part of the lake, again advanced over the land for a space of seven or eight miles.

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